No not the Mike Judge film but a thread about the current state of politics in America and around the world.

Disagreement is fine but it has to be on the based on facts. That means No Conspiracy Theories or Baseless claims (E.G. "George Soros Ate My Baby" or "John Podesta is a Satanist Running A Child Sex Ring out of a Pizza Parlour".) If your claims can only be found in hyperpartisan clickbait parts of the internet and don't cut the mustard with Snopes or Politifact then it's not true and I don't know why you would believe it in the first place.

- China will put special tariffs on products exported to the US. This will increase the price of many products.
- At least one natural disaster will be botched by FEMA. Similar to the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.
- You will start to hear arguments by the Trump administration, low level Republicans, and pundits that the US should put boots on the grown in Syria on the side of Al-Assad and Russia.
- A very conservative Judge will be appointed. The judge will have a very poor history of protecting civil liberties.
- Congress will successfully pass several bills to deregulate various industries. Manufacturing and energy will be at the top of the list.
- GDP will drop for the first time since 2008. It will finish the year right around $16.5 Trillion.
- Unemployment rates will rise from 4.7% at the end of 2016 to 6% by the end of 2017.
- Intelligence leaks will be an issue all year long.

Definitely agree on Syria, which will be fun to watch them possibly try to wriggle out on later. That's the thing, Trump has to own some of this stuff now and his decision making.

Supreme Court fight is not going to be pretty to watch. McConnell's hypocrisy on that is astounding.

That Trump has made the intelligence community his enemy is going to make for an extremely fraught pissing match, choosing bald-faced denials and Russian intelligence to counter their assertions doesn't bode well. What was released last night was corroborated to the extent that it was confidently reported to Obama. It's worth being highly sceptical about but not dismissing. Buzzfeed were irresponsible to just throw it out there like that to be fair.

Today's news a man named Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III from Selma Alabama (no prizes for guessing whose side he was on during the civil rights era) will probably get confirmed as the U.S. Attorney General.

Tillerson and Carson had disastrous hearings but will probably get confirmed anyway.

The Senate had a sneaky vote on taking away health care protections from the needy without any congressional plan ready to replace it.

Fascist Marine Le Pen, possibly the next President of France God forbid, whose father was a Holocaust denier was spotted at Trump Tower.

A frightening thought Slim, I hope they feel the political implications of taking Healthcare away from tens of millions. I hope they don't but if Republicans have proven anything it's the doing anything for anyone has never been what they've been about in recent times.

Indeed. There is a little morbid delight on my end of watching tons of Trump voters angry and upset about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and realizing that that was how the were getting healthcare (and that Obamacare and the ACA were the same damn thing). I know it's petty as hell and the blow back fucks over millions of people, but still this is what you have wanted for years, and now you got it.

Indeed, it's incomprehensible to outsiders that America doesn't have anything close to single payer healthcare. The Republicans would be hard pressed to come up with a plan to the right of Obamacare. Hence the mealy mouthed replies and silence when pressed on what a replacement would look like. They just don't care. It takes a special kind of corruption to deny a first world country a halfway decent healthcare system.

Big slim wrote:watching tons of Trump voters angry and upset about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and realizing that that was how the were getting healthcare (and that Obamacare and the ACA were the same damn thing).

Seriously?

Fucking hell, I thought the people in the U.K who voted for Brexit were morons for not understanding the consequences. How can these people not realise what their own healthcare system is?

"My favourite spot is the one where I would pick him up for an aeroplane spin and rotate as many times as possible. He’d be so dizzy that he would try to pin the referee, and I’d count to three and he’d think that he won - Daniel Bryan

Aye Andy, people vote for one thing as a distraction and suffer unintended consequences because they were lied to. Sounds all too familiar. A GOP congressmen had to leave a meeting early over angry constituents complaining about the ACA Repeal, they're feeling the brunt of it.

Yep Andy, you would be surprised at what people don't pay attention to. It's why I never liked the ACA being called Obamacare, because that just made it illegitimate in the minds of the average base of the GOP, which is poorer/working class white voters.

The callous nature of the GOP and them not having any damn replacement is just sickening. Just as the Dems needed a reality check and stop with the elitism that cost them the election, poorer/working class GOP voters should get a big wake up call and realize that Trump gave zero shits about them and the GOP has zero plan for actually looking out for them.

Healthcare when is difficult when it isn't politicised, when it is it's downright impossible but everyone agrees it's a necessity. Greedy insurance providers and price gouging pharmaceutical companies are the only factors preventing the U.S. from having a public option, something that nearly every first world nation had.

Obama does the right thing and commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence at the end of his term. It's a tricky spot to be in when you're governing but it was the right thing to do while he had the chance. Also, a gesture to progressives that when he can he'll come down on their side when he's in a political bind. Same for the DAPL protest.

Trump's daily Twitter wars are wearing severely thin. His approval ratings and political capital will tank if he keeps it up. He no longer has Hillary Clinton to rail against. He'll soon learn that governing is hard and that carnival strongman tactics won't work going forward.